Alcide De Gasperi

Alcide De Gasperi (3 April 1881-19 August 1954) was Prime Minister of Italy from 10 December 1945 to 17 August 1953, succeeding Ferruccio Parri and preceding Giuseppe Pella. He was a member of the conservative Christian Democracy party.

Biography
Alcide De Gasperi was born in Trentino, Austria-Hungary in 1881. He graduated from the University of Vienna in 1905 and became involved in the Italian Catholic Social Movement before entering the Austrian Parliament in 1911 as a representative of the Christian democratic Trentine Popular Party, which stood for local autonomy. Following Italy's acquisition of Trentino after World War I, he became active in the Popolari and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1921. He was an ouspoken independent of the fascist movement, and he lost his parliamentary seat in 1926 for conspiring against Benito Mussolini's government. He was imprisoned from 1927 to 1929, and he took refuge in the Vatican City, where he worked his way up from a cataloguer to secretary of the Vatican Library.

After the liberation of Rome in 1944 during World War II, he became active in the new Christian Democracy party, becoming the party's first Prime Minister in December 1945. In his long period of office, he committed Italy to NATO, friendship with the Unied States, and European integration, but he failed to introduce fundamental administrative or judicial reforms during his time in office. His tenure of office inaugurated the DC's uninterrupted participation in national government until its dissolution in 1994, and he resisted any attempt for the party to become a Catholic party, although he was happy to accept the Catholic Church's support in general elections. At the same time, he steered the DC along a violently anti-communist course, from which it liberated itslf only in the 1970s under Giulio Andreotti. He resigned in July 1953 after he failed to gain an absolute majority for the DC and its allies in the parliamentary elections, though he remained party secretary until his death.